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The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

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Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#81

Post by atchoo »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #19
teleforce wrote: post #6

I'm pretty sure they got this 'original' idea from the practice of their Muslim contemporaries. This is a very similar concept to the origin of cheque where it's too dangerous to carry gold and cash along the silk road from Middle East countries to China and beyond.

Stupid question, but wouldn't stealing a cheque work back then? I mean I can imagine only known people would be allowed to cash it. Plus there's more benefits to carrying a cheque, large quantities get difficult to move around (same with cash money, which is one reason that higher denominations are discouraged)

Interesting question. I've read books about the Templars and it didn't come up. Some speculation:

Worth bearing in mind the type of people using this service were landed gentry. A Turkish bandit wouldn't do well turning up at a Templar fortress trying to redeem some French Lordlings's gold but you still have to expect unscrupulous Europeans would be stealing from each other.

I'd expect the KYC was pretty strong at the issuers that handled gold/property. Your family would be known, not just the individual. I think they were redeeming food/lodgings/services while on route so defrauding a remote fortresses might not be at all rewarding. To score big I think you'd need to present as landed gentry at places like London which sounds hard... your target would need to have no friends/relations... but it's the premise of 1000s of historical fiction novels so eh?!

Wax seals and such were the authentication tools at the time. It might hobble attempted fakes but I would assume thieves would steal the cygnet rings and such too. I've seen claims the Templars used cyphers but that type of history gets blurred with the romantic stories. Encoding a password onto the cheque seems painfully obvious to us today.

I imagine there was a chain of custody of the person themselves. Templars were protecting the pilgrims not just their gold so they accompanied them from location to location so the chance of someone unknown turning up at a gate with cheques to cash is less likely. I also imagine they were in groups with others of similar stature with similar arrangements so the difference between an authentic wealthy traveller and a chancer might be quite vast. I imagine there was a network of letters between Templar sites tracking the notable Lords so faking your way into someone else's identity would be quite tricky.

From what I gather, it foremost may simply have been a risk based business where the vast profit covered the losses.

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#82

Post by coliveira »

FredPret wrote: post #70
spicymaki wrote: post #69

The tragic end to the Knights Templar brings to mind David Graeber's idea of bringing back the jubilee: https://davidgraeber.org/articles/after-the-jubilee/ Excerpted from Wikipedia: The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; as they became unable to secure their holdings in the Holy Land, support for the order faded. Rumors about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of F…

International banks have spearheaded an absolute explosion in global economic growth. Looking at your story above, Philip was the bad actor and the Templars should've played politics better (maybe lending money to the pope as well?)

> lending money to the pope

The Pope was the owner of everything. It was, after all, a catholic order. The game here was very much the King of France attacking the money power of the Church, instead of an isolated problem with the Templars.

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#83

Post by hef19898 »

tgv wrote: post #58
hef19898 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, everytime to see a stone sculpture of a knight on a tomb with his feet crossed, it means he was involved in pillaging and whatnot in the holly lands. So yes, they deffinietly were pillaging thieves. Just look up hoe the Doge of Venice got them to divert to nowaday Istanbul and pillaged it to repay their debt to Venice.

Yes, they did. But their banking operations did not consist of pillage. > Just look up hoe the Doge of Venice got them to divert to nowaday Istanbul You're not talking about the Templars, are you?

No, not the knight templars. Rather crusaders in general, excluding the children's crusade of course.

The templars were incredibly well organized.

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#84

Post by coliveira »

dav_Oz wrote: post #62

> They can use their international reach to try to sidestep taxes and regulations. And, since their debts to each other are a very real kind of private money, when the banks are fragile, the entire monetary system of the world also becomes vulnerable. We are still trying to figure out what to do with these banks. We cannot live without them, it seems, and yet we are not sure we want to live with them. Governments hav…

> he waged very costly wars

Kings of the time didn't think of the modern trick: (1) making gold useless to make tax payments and (2) creating your own fiat money, with no backing on anything but the power to make more wars.

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#85

Post by yucky »

motohagiography wrote: post #79
yucky wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether the Templars picked it up by learning and adapting Islamic Hawala during the crusades Doubtful. Money lenders/changers existed long before Islam (something about Jesus flipping their tables over in the Temple), and Hawala from my understanding is a flat commission based service (not interest based), since usury is forbidden.

Christianity forbids usury as well, hence why hawala seemed like a plausible candidate system for how the Templar banking system may have scaled. Interest calculations are complicated, where something simple like a commission scales easily. Given what we know now about economics and how systems scale, it seems like there is a systems view of the necessary conditions that might shed some new light on some history that…

   > Christianity forbids usury as well
I don't believe this is correct. Admittedly I'm agnostic though, so I may be mistaken. But I've studied the subject quite a bit as an outsider.

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#86

Post by dgb23 »

FredPret wrote: post #70
spicymaki wrote: post #69

The tragic end to the Knights Templar brings to mind David Graeber's idea of bringing back the jubilee: https://davidgraeber.org/articles/after-the-jubilee/ Excerpted from Wikipedia: The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; as they became unable to secure their holdings in the Holy Land, support for the order faded. Rumors about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of F…

International banks have spearheaded an absolute explosion in global economic growth. Looking at your story above, Philip was the bad actor and the Templars should've played politics better (maybe lending money to the pope as well?)

> International banks have spearheaded an absolute explosion in global economic growth.

I assumed it's the other way around. Economic growth comes from technical and cultural advancements. Banks are a symptom of that growth.

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#87

Post by WeylandYutani »

FredPret wrote: post #70
spicymaki wrote: post #69

The tragic end to the Knights Templar brings to mind David Graeber's idea of bringing back the jubilee: https://davidgraeber.org/articles/after-the-jubilee/ Excerpted from Wikipedia: The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; as they became unable to secure their holdings in the Holy Land, support for the order faded. Rumors about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of F…

International banks have spearheaded an absolute explosion in global economic growth. Looking at your story above, Philip was the bad actor and the Templars should've played politics better (maybe lending money to the pope as well?)

The pope and the Catholic church lost its power a few centuries later. Eventually in Europe everything was subsumed by the government creating all powerful nation states.

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#88

Post by atchoo »

hef19898 wrote: post #46
tgv wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Templars were not set up to send off bandits and do God's work. They started as protection for pilgrimage, set up an system to move funds from Europe into the Holy Land to support their work (which included hiring quite a few mercenaries), which turned into banking, and were half-coerced into some of the Crusades (notably not the first), because they were indeed the experienced, hardened and loyal soldiers that w…

Fun fact, everytime to see a stone sculpture of a knight on a tomb with his feet crossed, it means he was involved in pillaging and whatnot in the holly lands. So yes, they deffinietly were pillaging thieves. Just look up hoe the Doge of Venice got them to divert to nowaday Istanbul and pillaged it to repay their debt to Venice.

Nah, that's a popular myth. I too was told it as a child but I understand the real reason is much more mundane... it's easier to sculpt. Creating realistic looking legs out straight requires under-cutting and they still look kinda "off" so crossing the legs was a bit of hack to improve realism without delicate work.

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2016/02/cross-your-leg...

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#89

Post by labster »

yucky wrote: post #85
motohagiography wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christianity forbids usury as well, hence why hawala seemed like a plausible candidate system for how the Templar banking system may have scaled. Interest calculations are complicated, where something simple like a commission scales easily. Given what we know now about economics and how systems scale, it seems like there is a systems view of the necessary conditions that might shed some new light on some history that…

> Christianity forbids usury as well I don't believe this is correct. Admittedly I'm agnostic though, so I may be mistaken. But I've studied the subject quite a bit as an outsider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury#Christianity

It sure looks like direct words from Jesus to me, not to expect anything in return for a loan. It’s just that Christian culture chose to ignore this rule in exchange for capitalism and colonialism.

Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)

#90

Post by prox »

mudita wrote: post #65
eyko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct. Funny enough, this is also obscure knowledge even in e.g Spanish. We use the word salario (from latin salarium) which has the same meaning as in latin: words ending in -ario (lat: -arium) is used to denote association, like in templario (templar) or revolucionario (revolutionary). For some reason, however, nobody thinks of "salario" as something associated with salt (sal). I guess it's so strange in t…

This blog by a classicist claims that the word salary is indeed coming from the latin words salarium and sal, but that it is not clear what the connection is, that there is neither evidence for the explanation that Roman soldiers were paid in salt nor that it was an allowance for the specific purpose of buying salt: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.ht... Regarding the latter he writes: "As I…

In the book on the history of Rome, Livy states : “Again, the monopoly of salt, the price of which was very high, was taken out of the hands of individuals and wholly assumed by the government. Imposts and taxes were removed from the plebs that they might be borne by the well-to-do, who were equal to the burden: the poor paid dues enough if they reared children.”
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